Imagine some photographs. You know what they depict—it is of your culture—but the content bears no immediate relationship to you. Imagine some poems. The poet, the one who invites you to those photographs, is no more entitled to treat the historical events depicted than you are. Yet, in these poems, you see such strong, compelling ties between the poet and history. Awestruck, you feel the compulsion to also lay claim to this past. You ask what is required of you. Which place to look? How can you project yourself there? The poet Jenny Xie reassures you that you can stay where you are. Here in this present moment when more images will begin to develop. Look where she points you—
To the Cultural Revolution, which took place in mainland China during the sixties and seventies, I—and many others of my “zoomer” generation—tend to respond with disinterest. The lapse of time, which is more than half a century, conveniently explains our lack of care. But what pardons us to some extent is that our history textbooks, glossing over the roles played by different political actors, encourage oblivion to what we are conditioned to
